James Cameron Calls Out People “Whining” About ‘Avatar 2’ Run Time: “It’s Okay to Get Up and Go Pee”

Avatar filmmaker James Cameron is already anticipating the backlash to his new movie and shutting it down with some sharp words of his own. In a new interview with Empire, Cameron snapped at critics who may be wary of Avatar: The Way of Water‘s three-hour run time.

The director pointed out that plenty of people will settle down to watch hours of TV, but balk at the idea of sitting through hours worth of a single film: “I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours,” Cameron told Empire.

“I can almost write this part of the review. ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie…’ It’s like, give me a fucking break,” he continued. “I’ve watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row. Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s okay to get up and go pee.”

Cameron’s upcoming Avatar film will debut over a decade after the original, which first hit theaters in 2009 and clocked in at two hours and 40 minutes long. The movie, which grossed $2.84 billion at the box office and earned three Oscars, also saw its fair share of criticism, which has apparently made its way back to Cameron.

The director let loose on haters of his 2009 sci-fi epic, telling Empire, “The trolls will have it that nobody gives a shit and they can’t remember the characters’ names or one damn thing that happened in the movie. Then they see the movie again and go, ‘Oh, okay, excuse me, let me just shut the fuck up right now.’ So I’m not worried about that.”

Avatar: The Shape of Water is set to premiere December 16 and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet and Cliff Curtis. But Cameron isn’t stopping there — he’s set to release three additional Avatar sequels in the coming years, with tentative release dates on Dec. 20, 2024, Dec. 18, 2026, and Dec. 22, 2028.

By our estimation, that’s about nine more hours in the Avatar universe. Buckle up!